I've started this entry a thousand times since the middle of July 2013, and I didn't really find the words I wanted until I was at a concert last night. I'm not sure who all will end up seeing this, now, but I certainly never planned to just leave this hanging. I wanted to end it properly. And I didn't. So, I'll leave this here in case someone else wanders by.

For those of you who hadn't heard, the blog's sudden silence corresponds to when Steve and I broke up and he moved out. ContraSyncretist ended up being a project between the two of us, and so when that relationship broke off, the blog was collateral damage. Something had to give while I rebuilt, and this blog was the thing in my life that could give without depriving me of work, food, or shelter. So there you go.

(For the record, at this point both Steve and I have moved on, and while I don't dare to speak for Steve, I'm in a much better place now. Steve and I both still contra, he more regularly than I these days, but we're still out there.)

However, I did want to talk a little bit about what I learned over the course of the interviews and the videos and the project as a whole. I met some really fabulous people and I'm very glad they gave me some of their time to help me explore the question of what techno contras were doing and meant to the contra community.

I've since come to the conclusion that techno contras are and were part of a bigger thing, to examine the "givens" of the contra culture and see why things are the way they are. And I still think the community is the better for it.

Alternative contras play with the idea of the aesthetic of contra, and challenge the idea that all contra must be done to a) live and b) acoustic music under c) fairly average and even room lighting. And if you change that, the vibe changes.

With that come the folks that challenge the idea that all of the choreography should be done as-written, without the flourishes, that part of the beauty of contra is everyone moving together. But does everyone have to be moving exactly together for the dance to keep that synergy? (Shocker) I'd argue no, so long as the points of connection to the larger group (and safety considerations!) are still there.

Additionally, there are challenges to the ideas of gender roles in contra -- both in the sense of who dances on the right and who on the left, and in the sense of whether the community has to accept "creepers" -- whose creepiness frequently, but not always, rests on differences in age and/or gender -- and what the communities are doing to ensure that the dance is fun for everyone. And when it's discovered that a common dance term might be making a community less welcome than it should be, people within those communities work to see what they can do to continue to make their practices align with their stated values.

All of these are "givens" that the form picked up since the folk revival of the 1970s. Do they still serve us?

I've had a few very kind people approach me and tell me they miss this blog. I do, too, but there are many other voices are talking about these things and filling these blanks in the time since this blog went quiet, and this is a wonderful and powerful thing. I was glad to publicly be part of the discourse for a bit over two years. Growth happens when people and communities examine themselves and take a look at the beliefs that sustain them, and decide whether or not those beliefs and tenets still serve them well. And while there may be some disagreement over what is necessary to ensure that community tenets still serve them, the process itself leads to some growth simply because the participants go through the exercise.

I hope the community can continue to grow and keep the things that serve it, and can help to change the things that do not. It's got a lot of really passionate and eloquent people in it, and I maintain that it is a good thing for people in the community to keep talking about these issues and try to reach conclusions that will keep it flourishing for many years to come.

In the meantime, I hope to see you on the dance floor sometime soon. :)

The older I get, the more I’m convinced that adulthood is at least partly about finding your community -- be it the members of your household or your “tribe” that you hang out with. When I left off in Part 1, I’d found mine, and it was awesome.A couple of years later (circa 2010) my body started to decide that it was no longer willing to be as cooperative as it had been to date. I had a lengthy battle with bronchitis (that wasn’t diagnosed as such until a couple of months in), my other knee decided that it would start filing grievances with my body on a regular basis and as such I needed to wear another knee brace, and then later my lower back did something weird in late 2011/early 2012 that has meant my deep-dipping days are mostly behind me at this point, with rare exceptions (but man, they were fun while they lasted). A little later on, I was saving up for a trip abroad and was unsteadily employed, so the trips to the diner fell away in the name of saving money. Unfortunately, the ongoing health issues also meant that I couldn’t keep up with the hot-shot line anymore, at least not consistently. I started dancing in the other lines more regularly, and meeting new folks that way (including a few who made surprised comments that I wasn’t dancing over in the far line). A few of the folks I used to dance with in the cool hip dancer line still sought me out, but most of them stayed over in the cool hip dancer line, dancing with each other, and I didn’t get to see them unless there was a gender imbalance, I was sitting out, and they were scraping the sides of the room for partners.I'll be blunt: at first, this really stung. The folks I had thought were my friends didn’t ask to dance with me anymore, and they no longer even asked if I wanted to go to the diner anymore. I actually considered quitting contra at that point, since a lot of the appeal had been that community and my inclusion in it.Somewhere around this point I was having a pity party for myself (complete with tiny violin solo) and Steve metaphorically smacked me upside the head: “When was the last time you asked them for a dance?”Took me a little bit, but as much as I hated to admit it, he was right. In waiting for them to ask me, I’d been taking on a really awful attitude, and that was really not helping anything at all. Who the heck was I to demand that they bridge the gap instead of attempting to do so myself? They certainly didn’t owe me anything and while I certainly hadn’t thought of it that way, I could see where this interpretation of my lament had some legs. After this forehead-smacking “Aha!” moment, I resolved to make more of a point of seeking them out at least some of the time, instead of waiting for them to come to me like they had before.It’s harder to get dances with a lot of the folks who used to be my regular partners as a lot of them book way ahead these days, and I’m pretty sure I pushed some of them away when I stopped going to the diner/stopped dancing in the far-left line because of the aforementioned bodily rebellion, but the frequency of my being able to dance with those friends went up once I got over myself and went over and asked them, rather than waiting for them to ask me most of the time. (There are some that I finally wrote off asking after being deferred indefinitely several weeks in a row -- I can take a hint, and I didn’t and don’t want to be a pest -- but many I still dance with at least sometimes.) After six years and counting of dancing, even after the health issues resolved, I have unfortunately never been able to get my 22-year-old body back. Consequently, I now frequently steer folks I used to dance with into other lines where I run into less consistently vigorous/flourishy neighbors, but when I head over to the really vigorous line, I make a point of being able to keep up -- and I try and make a point of asking the folks who usually dance there to partner me as well. I’m accepting this in the interest of being able to dance for many more years (hopefully with at least some flourishes thrown in) and remain active in the contra community.In the meantime, I’ve expanded my circle of “regular partners” and that’s all been to the better -- just through partnering them, the not-flourishy dancers are teaching me style points among other things, too, which are actually making me a better flourisher when I dance with the flourishy folks. We nurture the connections in different ways, kind of like when you have some friends you go hiking with, and others you go see movies with.At this point I’ve established myself enough as a dancer who doesn’t have a “usual” line anymore that I’ve stopped getting the “what are you doing over here?” questions. I’ve been able to make more friends who aren’t exclusively in that line and while it’s been ages since I’ve been out to the diner (that whole hour-plus-each-way commute to work I mentioned in another post saps a lot of the energy I regained when I got better, and I’ve come to accept that), I’ve still found otherways to maintain the feeling of fellowship and camaraderie that have made me stay part of this community.So my story has a happy ending. But it’s also a cautionary tale -- before you complain that “the cool hip dancers” won’t dance with you, ask yourself: when was the last time you went and asked them for a dance?(And incidentally -- if you see me at an event, please do ask me to dance, whether we’ve met before or not, whichever role you’d rather dance, as I’ll dance either one or dance switch. Chances are good that I’ll say yes to an invitation to dance, whether you’re a Cool Hip Dancer or not -- and I’ll be making a point of asking around, too.)

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So, I’ll admit it. My name is Ryan and I used to be a cool hip dancer.I started out innocently enough. I had reached a point in my life in my early twenties where I needed to get out of the house and Google told me that there was a local weekly contra dance about 20 minutes from my apartment on Friday nights. I had decided that since I didn’t know anybody there, if I made a complete jerk of myself I’d just have a self-effacing story to tell and I wouldn’t go back. Worst case scenario: no harm, no foul, new story to tell. So I went. And people actually wanted to dance with me (to my pleasant surprise). Probably made a jerk out of myself a few (dozen) times in that first evening of contra, but the endorphin rush was enough to overpower the sense of having muscles that hurt that I didn’t know I had and, armed with ibuprofen and a bandanna to keep the sweat out of my eyes, I headed back the following week. And the week after that….And the week after that….After a couple of months of regular attendance, I started getting invited out to the diner after the dance. And I went, regularly, for a couple of years. And there were like 20 of us who went out regularly, ages 16 to 60+ but mostly in the 20s-and-30s range. And as time went on, I found myself dancing with my friends, and more and more often that landed me in the far-left line in the hall...the one that had the most vigorous dancing, the one that skewed the youngest demographically, the one that contained several of the folks that I had been going out to the diner with for the past several months. It wasn’t that I was intentionally seeking it out, more that that’s where I ended up, more often than not. And since I was over there, it became a self-perpetuating cycle: I went into the far-left line, I danced, I got asked to dance by one of my neighbors, we stayed in that line for the next dance, I got asked to dance by one of my neighbors, we stayed in that line…until the entire night had passed that way. That was how I spent several months, and I had no particular issue with it. I danced with newbies if they ventured over, but by and large I was dancing with experienced dancers and got pretty good at following their leads (and learning to back-lead some of my own). I nourished the connections with my partners (and some of my neighbors) through flourishes, and life was hunky dory as far as I was concerned. I had friends who were in my general age cohort (and a few who weren’t) who seemed to like me and seek me out, I had a community, and I had dance partners for any dance I opted . I felt like I’d come home, and it was really fun feeling like one of the “cool” kids for the first time in my life.

Temperatures have climbed and the lack of climate control at some venues has become apparent. It occurred to me the other night as I was dancing in the crowd at Glen Echo that in some ways, a crowded contra event can strangely resemble a mosh pit. To wit:

ContraForce (Andrae Raffield, Jimi Peirano, & Joey Dorwart) is one of the newer fusion bands on the scene; originally from South Carolina, they've been touring up and down the East Coast and making a splash wherever they go. They released their album, Rise of the Folk Organism, earlier this summer.

"Werrwoulph" opens the album with an eerie feel and some very high-pitched fiddle and some rather stark instrumentation with the howl of the electric guitar featured rather prominently with what sounds an awful lot like a distortion pedal. By the time this track hits its stride, it seems to bleed into noise-band territory (which might just be the mixing), but regardless is a surprising opening to a contra dance band's album and sets us up for what will undoubtedly be an unusual ride.

"Roof'n'all-EazySleazy" takes off like a shot and has the feel of an old Western mixed with a wah-wah pedal, which becomes more prominent as the track goes on but then fades back into the fiddle-heavy hornpipe with the funky drumbeat behind it.

In contrast, "No Need" slows way down and is soft and subtle like improvised jazz, or blues. Something in the background sounds like dripping water on this track, and this helps to lend it the feel of a mood piece more than anything else. All that said, this track grew on me to become one of my favorites on the album.

"Dr. Know" opens feeling like a salsa piece, in contrast to the slower pace of the previous track and felt a bit like a celebratory, coiled spring that released its energy in a really fabulous way. Also notable is that this track did not noticeably use the distortion pedal as much as the other tracks on the album thus far.

The tracks are interesting, but for a CD I personally think they feel a little long. However, this probably was meant to mimic the experience of dancing/hearing them live, so I don't necessarily think this is a drawback per se.

Overall, I felt like the album as an album had an issue with pacing, and seemed as though it couldn't make up its mind what it wanted to be. Individual tracks, on the other hand, were really interesting and taken together showed the breadth and variety of which ContraForce is capable, which is really neat to see. I'm looking forward to seeing what else comes from them in the future.

Earlier this year I got a permanent job that has me in the car an hour each way to get to work. (Fortunately, it's against traffic.) As such, I've gotten to listen to many hours of local radio morning shows on my commute in. Anna Kendrick's song "Cups" came on the radio sometime this spring (not just the one-minute version she did in Pitch Perfect and several talk shows to promote the same, a full-length radio edit).

In a surprisingly intelligent comment made on one of the morning shows, one of the hosts mentioned that the song was not in fact "new," per se, but was an update of a song that originated in the first part of the 20th century.Oh really? think I. I'll have to go look that up.So I did, and discovered that yes, in fact, Kendrick's version is in fact a remake of Lulu and the Lampshades (now apparently known as Landshapes)' single from 2009, which was adapted a song from earlier last century (c. 1931) by the Carter Family.

When I got home, I mentioned this to Steve. He was promptly rather perturbed -- apparently he had been thinking about working up the Lulu and the Lampshades version as a song to lead at song circles, but now felt that he couldn't because it was a song that was popular on the radio. When I asked him why it makes a difference, he said that "No one goes to a song circle wanting to hear something that they can already listen to ten times a day on some pop station. One of the big thrills of a circle is getting to hear songs you enjoy that you would otherwise never hear anywhere else." Honestly, I suspect that a fair lot of the popularity of the Kendrick version revolves around the fact that she was in the Twilight movies and her career is continuing from that basis. But, somewhat cynical blogger opinion aside, it’s really rather interesting that the song has come into the mainstream vogue in that way, and that because of that it could end up out of favor in some song circles. Because it’s on the radio, and as a result is now everywhere, it’s no longer one of the things that folkies are looking for in the song circles and such that are more away from the mainstream. There is this odd sense of “Othering” that I’ve found comes to and from the contra community (and perhaps the folkie community in general), and while sometimes they can reflect various community values (e.g.,: most contra events are alcohol-free; most contra events try to make a point of using local talent as well as getting some touring folks, when they’re available), sometimes they can feel a bit arbitrary (e.g., if one finds it in “mainstream” culture and therefore it is inherently inferior and has nothing to offer the Tradition). Adding a conventionally pretty, known face to an old song and making a radio edit that is then played on pop stations a lot can both make a song relevant to a new audience and doom it in the folkie circles for being, in some ways, “not Other enough” to make it acceptable. (As posited before, to me this seems to be more of an aesthetic issue than anything else, but that’s a tangent here.)At the same time, part of the reason that contra dancing isn’t more popular is because of this “Otherness.” It is, for good or for ill, associated with other forms of folk dance in the public imagination and as such is not appealing to several potential audiences out there. At the same time, suggestions that contra events could or should be advertised “to the gen pop” is met with a somewhat unfavorable reaction. So there is a tension...how to keep an event “Other” enough that it is appealing to the current folks (who like it as something “Other”) and how to keep an event accessible enough that you get new people in and keep the community sustainable.In marketing we talk about finding your target audience and getting your information into the streams where they get their information. But, while the community knows it needs to do it, is that something that they really want to stretch themselves to do? Are they willing to sacrifice a little “Otherness” to gain some of the mainstream attention? Whether or not they can or wish to, should they do so, and to what degree?I don’t have an answer to that, but I’m certainly willing to hear what other folks think.

Special thanks to Steven Roth for sharing his views and for the research assistance!

...And Some More Syncretism

The short version of why I started dancing is that I reached a time in my life where I really needed to get out of the house and so I weighed a few options in my head and some friends in college had gone contra dancing so I Googled "contra dance washington dc" and found Glen Echo. Unfortunately, it was a Saturday when I did this, so I resolved to go the following Friday night, figuring that if I made a complete and total jerk of myself that I didn't have to go back and I didn't know anybody there so it didn't really matter. Besides, it would make a decent story to tell later, regardless. (Actually, that last bit is the reason I do lots of things.)

(Perhaps this should be subtitled, "In Which The Blogger Kicks A Hornet Nest.")

There are various threads around the web lately about outreach to new dancers (and ways to revamp how we approach beginners), or the importance of feeding your local dance community as well as the snazzy dance weekends that tend to self-select for advanced dancers.I've gotten into conversations with folks about public advanced dances lately as well. To be clear, I'm not talking about private parties, dance weekends, many one-off techno contras, or all-day days of dance (all of which tend to self-select for advanced dancers). I'm referring to the regular nights of dancing (~3 hours) that are publicly advertised, but are advertised as "experienced dancers only please; new dancers are welcome next week" types of things.

I'm actually wondering a bit about their existence in the first place. I have yet to hear a reason for them (and here's where y'all can help me) that doesn't boil down to some variant of, "...because dancing with newbies sucks."

It's also entirely possible that I'm missing something here, and that there is an angle of this that I have overlooked entirely. (I hope so; I'm having a viscerally negative reaction to the reason cited above.)

So I'm using one of the perks of being a blogger and crowd-sourcing this for my own edification: if you're in favor of publicly-advertised "advanced-dancer only" dances, could you kindly clarify why? I want to see both sides of it.

Full disclosure: Steve and I did not go to the one-off "advanced dance" at Glen Echo last month, but that was more a result of its happening when we had other stuff going on than really a conscious choice either way (beyond "we are not cancelling our previously-made plans in order to attend").

This project has concluded as of mid-2013 (with an epilogue posted mid-2016) but we hope to see you soon on a contra dance floor! Meanwhile, head over to our Facebook page for upcoming techno contra events and other items of interest.

Author

I dance with abandon. I play with glowsticks. I look for music that is conducive to one or both. I play behind cameras. I write about all of the above. I'm based in Glen Echo's contra dance community outside of Washington, D.C., but I'm happy to go dance afield when I can. Lather, rinse, repeat. Always repeat.